Hand in Hand: A Benefit for Hurricane Relief has announced a donation from Apple of $5 million towards Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma relief.

Apple is also making it easy for customers to donate directly to the Hand in Hand relief efforts. Starting this weekend, anyone with an iPhone, iPad, Mac or PC running iTunes can donate directly through the App Store and iTunes. Apple's donations, and those customers make through the App Store and iTunes, will go directly to hurricane relief efforts.

"On behalf of everyone at Apple, our hearts go out to the millions of people whose lives have been disrupted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and the many more still bracing for Irma's impact," said Apple's CEO Tim Cook. "We applaud Hand in Hand for bringing together people from all over the country to help one another at a time when so many desperately need it. In addition to Apple's direct contribution to the relief and recovery efforts, we're making it easy for anyone in the US to make their own donations to Hand in Hand through the App Store and iTunes."

"This is an incredible gesture. In such a time of need, it's inspiring to all of us to see our friends at Apple step up in this way to help," said Scooter Braun, SB Projects founder and Hand in Hand executive producer. "We're incredibly grateful to Apple, our founding sponsors Verizon, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and everyone else who is doing their part. This is a moment in time where we can all come together and show that we are our brother's keeper."

A Hand-in-Hand telethon will air live and commercial free on Tuesday, September 12, 8:00-9:00pm EDT on the East Coast and re-air 8:00-9:00pm PDT on the West Coast. Comic Relief USA, the non-profit organization behind Red Nose Day and Idol Gives Back, will be responsible for collecting donations in addition to managing and distributing grants through the Hand in Hand Hurricane Relief Fund.

Cheap bastards..stop giving them money to hoard! - September 10, 2017 at 12:10pm

Wow, five million when you have over $280 billion in cash? Hope that doesn't put you on the street. Cheap bastards. You could have given them one billion dollars & it would have been a tax write-off! And it would have actually done some good!

$250,000,000,000 (that's Billion) in cash reserves. That's cash money that they don't even use for operation. That's 0.00002% of of their reserves. Not of their entire net worth but 0.00002% of just their reserves. In fact, $5M is only 0.0000066% of Apples total net worth. Here's the thing that really ticks me off; Apple donates 0.0000066% of their net worth to flood relief and the majority of people either don't notice, don't care or think positively about Apples efforts. The president of the United States donates $1M or 0.0002% of his declared gross worth (and we all know he likes to exaggerate) and all people and the media can do is whine and complain and criticize him.